


stifled the choice and the air in my lungs

by 75hearts



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (it doesn't come up explicitly but it informs so much of my characterization in this one), Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Canon Asexual Character, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, Fanon-Typical Jon's Praise Kink, Flashbacks, Gratuitous Beholding, Hand Jobs, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unsafe breathplay, Victim Blaming, Voyeurism, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:07:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/75hearts/pseuds/75hearts
Summary: If the Eye needed fear—If the Eye didn’t care whose fear it was offered—Jon didn’t have aplan,exactly, but an idea bloomed in the back of his mind.-Late S4 Jon visits Elias in prison. It doesn't go quite how he expects it to.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 117





	stifled the choice and the air in my lungs

He always felt bad, reading old statements. Well. That was an oversimplification. He felt _better_ , when he read them. He just also felt... Afraid. Reading statements felt like becoming them. Like being watched.

He didn’t feel afraid, when he took live statements.

Jude’s voice echoed in his mind. _Feed it, fearlessly and without hesitation, or it will feed on you._ It had been over a year since she had taken his hand. It didn’t feel like a year had passed. Jon couldn’t tell if it felt like nine months or a lifetime.

It didn’t matter. If the Eye needed fear—

If the Eye didn’t care _whose_ fear it was offered—

Jon didn’t have a _plan_ , exactly, but an idea bloomed in the back of his mind.

**

He’s terrified, walking into the prison. It feels strange, somehow, that it should have a _door_.

He needs to focus. _I won’t ask questions,_ he thinks, a desperate resolve threading through his thoughts. _Won’t do anything you don’t want me to, please, please, please, whatever it is, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me—no rituals, nothing that hurts anyone else, just, please—_

His thoughts are interrupted by a guard. “What are you here for?”

“I want to see Elias Bouchard.” He lets a tinge of power flow into his voice, even though it’s not a question. The guard barely responds, and it’s not with shock. More like he just confirmed something the guard already suspected. (Of course the guard is unsurprised, if they’re guarding _Elias_.)

“And you are?”

“Jonathan Sims.” _Please Elias please—_

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

“Ask again. Just one time, then I’ll be out of your hair. I won’t—hurt anything, I’m not dangerous, or, I don’t _want_ to be dangerous to you, I just, I want you to ask him again. _Please_.”

The guard raises his eyebrows but leaves, hand still on something on his waist—pepper spray? a baton? no, PAVA spray, not pepper spray, it’s similar but entirely synthetic, rolled out in prisons in the UK earlier this year when he was still comatose—and Jon closes his eyes and begs.

When he opens his eyes again, the prison guard is back. He looks surprised now, and more than a bit wary. “He says you can come in.”

Jon exhales. He hadn’t even noticed when he had stopped breathing. His footsteps echo on the concrete as he follows. He’s not listening to the prison guard’s rote lecture about safety, just on his own breathing. In and out, in and out.

He speaks up only once the guard is about to let him in. ( _About to trap him in, with Elias, because this is a stupid idea and he’s lucky if all it does is kill him,_ something in his mind screams. It’s hard to hear past the hunger.) His voice has all the power of compulsion. “Do you know what Elias can do to you?”

“I know enough to be afraid of him,” the man says, and then startles at himself. Jon just smiles slightly, lips closed, somewhere between sad and dangerous, and nods.

“Good. I know you’ll be watching. Don’t—whatever you see, don’t come in.”

The guard doesn’t say anything to that. Just opens the door, lets Jon walk inside.

He knows it’s a bad idea.

It doesn’t matter. He makes himself step forward anyway.

The door closes. Elias turns around. He’s handcuffed, Jon notices, but not to the desk. He had expected Elias to be handcuffed to the desk, for some reason.

“Hello, Jonathan,” Elias says. He’s smiling, and it’s _that_ , somehow, that makes Jon look away. ( _Stupid_. As if looking away could help.) 

“What do you want,” he snaps, eyes on the floor.

“I’ll let that slide, since you didn’t use your _compulsion_ on me, but do remember I only let you in here because you promised not to ask me any questions. As for what I want—you’re the one who came here with a request for me, Jon. The better question is, what do _you_ want?”

“I—” He can barely make out the word. He had been right, looking at the floor didn’t help. He could still hear Elias’s smile in every word. “Am I—” Deep breath. No questions. “I came here because.” _Because I’m starving_. It sounds absurdly melodramatic, even to himself. “Because, um. I—it helps me to take statements. But it also, it helped me to record my _own_ statement. So I thought… if you hurt me. Then. That might…” He scowls, scuffs the floor with one shoe. “You can hurt me. If it would be useful.”

Elias walks towards him, towards, towards, and he tries not to flinch or shake or run away and manages one out of three. He’s never been _quite_ clear on how personal space works but he’s pretty sure this would be a violation, especially with Elias, who had always kept a respectful ( _professional_ ) distance. But—he _had_ asked.

“And why would I want to do that?”

It’s not the response Jon had expected; he looks up to see Elias, close enough to be almost touching him, now. Elias’s eyes are strangely engrossing, each capillary and saccade hard to look away from.

“Because… you… want to?” Jon’s voice is uncertain, distant. A contrast to Elias’s smug certainties.

“And if I don’t?”

Jon snaps his eyes shut, hard, as hard as he can. He takes a deep breath. “ _Please_.”

A beat. “Very well.” Elias is close enough now that Jon can feel the heat of his breath. “Perhaps I can think of something.”

Elias’s lips are soft and warm and unexpected enough that Jon startles, jumping backwards. Elias raises one eyebrow as he tries to collect himself.

“You _can_ leave, you know,” Elias says, watching with amusement as Jon gasps for air.

“I didn’t— no, I’m not— I just—”

“Thought it’d be worse? Jon. I don’t _want_ to hurt you.” Elias’s tone is a gentle admonishment, familiar from misfilings and days he fell asleep at work. 

Jon forces himself to step closer again, shivers into Elias’s hand in his hair. “ _Spare_ me. You could have flooded the tunnels with carbon dioxide as soon as Jane Prentiss arrived if you didn’t want me to be _hurt_.”

Elias’s thumb traces the boundary of a keloid scar on his cheek as he tilts Jon’s chin up. “I could also have let her worms eat you. Is it really so hard for you to believe that someone might not enjoy your pain?”

Jon snorts. “It is when it’s _you_.” Still, he leans his head up, and when Elias opens his mouth he matches the gesture, lets Elias’s tongue explore his mouth. It feels—uncomfortable, mostly, slimy and strange and unpleasant. He had kissed Georgie, had even made out, but always with his lips firmly shut. He’s the first to break the kiss, shuddering away, not quite a flinch. “I don’t—“ _want this_. He cuts himself off. He’s so _hungry_.

“Don’t what?” Elias asks anyway, licking his lips as if he could still taste Jon on them.

“Nothing,” Jon says, and can’t make himself mean it, but his jaw has the stubborn set to it that it always gets when he’s set on making a particularly bad decision.

“I wouldn’t want to _pressure_ you into anything you didn’t _want_ , after all,” Elias says, voice insufferably smug, and when he smiles he has a gleam in his eyes that reminds Jon of police uniforms and pocket knives. Predatory. He _knows_ , there’s no way he doesn’t know, and he’s decided to make Jon beg for it anyway. “I won’t do anything you don’t ask for.”

Jon decides in that moment that he hates Elias. He bites the inside of his cheek for just a moment. Not enough to taste blood, just enough that he can breathe. His heart is too fast. “I thought you were the one that didn’t want me _asking_ anything. I already said _please_ , what else could you even _want_.”

“I like hearing you say it,” Elias says. “To hear you beg for it. You’re lovely when you’re desperate, and a reminder of your choices never hurt anybody.” He shivers and then his mouth is on Jon’s again, his hands moving beneath Jon’s shirt, cold metal handcuffs against unsmooth skin. “My, you _have_ grown. No more of that or I _will_ gag you.”

Jon wants to explain, he hadn’t intended to phrase it as a question, certainly hadn’t intended any static to slip in, but surely Elias knows that. Better to keep his mouth shut and let Elias kiss him. Elias isn’t kicking him out and that means all he needs to do is— not make it worse. _I’m sorry_ , he thinks, as loudly as he can. _I’ll do better._

He has to raise his arms to let Elias take his shirt off. It feels silly to let Elias undress him like that. As though he were a child, even though Elias is the one handcuffed. He feels… small, somehow, without it, one more barrier between him and the world stripped away. Seen. Elias’s eyes are clinical on his bare flesh, analyzing the map of scars: the scar on his neck from Daisy, the scar on his shoulder from Melanie, the scar on his chest from Michael, the all-over spots of hungry worms. His ribcage is prominent enough that it’s easy to see his missing ribs; he’s never been great at eating, but even given that, he’s never been this thin before. It rises and falls fast, fast, fast, and Elias leans down to kiss it. “Well. I see _you’ve_ already gotten yourself worked up, haven’t you? You look _lovely_ like this, by the way.”

Jon bites his cheek again rather than admit to himself that he doesn’t have a sarcastic response ready, rather than trying and failing to think of the last time anyone complimenting him had sounded anything close to sincere. He tries to remind himself that this is, in many ways, a best-case scenario.

He almost manages to convince himself when Elias starts to suck a bruise into the side of his neck and he imagines Basira’s _look_ , seeing him come into work dotted with hickeys, and he can’t take it anymore. It’s on impulse that he pulls back from Elias only to kiss him hard, tugging at _his_ clothing with an air of desperation. 

Elias only laughs into his mouth, obliging the kiss but no further. “You _are_ eager. Not today, Jon. Today is all about _you_. No touching me without asking permission first.”

It _should_ feel different than being a child at an art museum and running around to feel the canvases before being sternly reprimanded. He’s an adult and Elias is a murderer who is quite possibly planning the end of the world, not his _chaperone_. Not even his boss anymore, since the arrest. 

That makes less of a difference than Jon might like it to. He flinches back immediately and then hates himself for how he looks up at the sound of Elias’s patronizing “ _Good_ boy.” For how he leans against Elias’s warm body when he sways, all exhaustion and starvation and adrenaline and too much caffeine. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise when Elias bites a mark into his unscarred shoulder. It is anyway. He closes his eyes and forces himself to breathe as Elias’s hands explore his now-bared torso, tracing his spine and pressing into his hip bones before coming up again to thumb at his nipples. He opens his eyes at that with a cry of surprise and a jolt of— _surprise_ , he tells himself, _just surprise_ —and then Elias does it again and he bites the inside of his cheek without care for whether there will be blood. 

“You shouldn’t lie to yourself,” Elias says. “It really doesn’t suit you, you know.”

“I wasn’t _lying_ ,” Jon manages, and when Elias _pinches_ and _twists_ in response he isn’t really surprised. 

“So you _can_ talk. I was beginning to wonder.”

Jon glares again. “Not like you couldn’t just _pluck what I wanted to say out of my mind_ , is it? Don’t see much _point_ to _conversation_.” After a moment: “...I didn’t want to ask any more questions.”

“I see. Probably for the best.” Elias’s smile is somewhere between _amused_ and _pitying_ , and it rankles. Jon wants to hiss at him—not useful—wants to kiss him, just to get him to shut up?—no, he’s not supposed to _touch_ —

“Adorable,” Elias murmurs, and kisses him again, long and slow. The word _indulgent_ pops into his mind; when it does, he can feel Elias’s lips smiling against his. “My perfect Archivist. I really _didn’t_ want for them to hurt you, you know. I could always have told Basira about your, ah, eating habits. But I was concerned that—well. I suppose I don’t need to tell _you_.” He caresses the concavity of Jon’s stomach with the back of his hand, the touch too-light, making Jon want to jump away from it. He leans into it instead. “ _I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free_. Michelangelo, though you already knew that, didn’t you? You’re becoming something incredible. You can’t lie to me, Jon, I know you feel it. If it’s hurt on occasion—well. We all suffer for our art. But I’ve never delighted in _unnecessary_ suffering.”

Tears prick the corners of his eyes when Elias’s fingers catch on his belt. He forces himself to take a breath. It’s not as though he had never touched _himself_ before, and this—this shouldn’t be any different. Wasn’t any different. Someone else’s hands, sure, but he wasn’t as unaccustomed to _that_ as he might prefer, either, from awkward teenage fumblings to plastic hands smearing thick lotion on his skin. 

He can’t help it. A tear falls from his eye, sticking to his eyelashes before rolling down his cheek. He braces himself for a reprimand, but no, Elias is smiling. _Because he’s evil_ , he reminds himself. _Because he’s evil and because he lied, obviously, because he’s enjoying every minute of this_.

Elias’s expression shifts minutely and Jon has no idea what it means but his lips are gentle on his cheek, kissing away the tear. _Or tasting it_ , he reminds himself, but it doesn’t have the same sting. 

“I’ll make this good for you, Jon,” Elias says. “You deserve that much from me.”

Jon’s belt falls to the floor, the metal buckle clinking quietly against the concrete. Elias kneels to undress Jon; he bends over fully to unlace his shoes and slide them off before working his trousers and pants down, leaving him utterly bare to the world. He wants to try to cover himself with his hands but even more than that he knows it would be pointless; Elias would raise his eyebrows and gently pry his hands away and make some _comment_ and leave him somehow feeling worse than before. Better to just… stand there. As though he can escape simply by not moving. _It’s a common misconception,_ he thinks wildly, _that a T. Rex would be unable to see you if you stood still. They had better vision than eagles._ He’s pretty sure he hadn’t known that a minute ago. It wouldn’t matter, except for Elias’s quiet intake of breath as he raises himself back to full height, except for the whispered “ _remarkable_ ” that he wishes he hadn’t heard or at the very least hadn’t _enjoyed_.

He shivers again and can’t tell if it’s from the praise or the feeling of being dissected by Elias’s gaze as it takes him in fully. He half expects Elias to ask him to turn around like a model showing off a particularly good outfit. 

“Not a bad idea, really,” Elias says, startling Jon out of his thoughts, “not that I would need you to. Cameras everywhere in here, and I can see through them just fine. Not that I don’t appreciate the thought. —Oh, you hadn’t realized, had you?”

He hadn’t, and he feels stupid for it, the adrenaline shot through his body tensing his muscles and making his breath come in stutters. He had _known_ that the guard would be supervising, had signed the consent form himself, had even _commented_ on it, and yet _somehow_ it still gave him a shock to think of him watching—this.

Elias smiles again. He’s beginning to grow tired of that smile, the patient arrogance to it. “Enjoying yourself, are you?” he asks, and—no, it had just been the adrenaline, it had to have just been the adrenaline, but his face flushes anyway and he presses his legs together almost instinctively against the half-hardness between them. “You’re lying to yourself again, Jonathan.”

Jon opens his mouth to respond but before he can he’s distracted by Elias’s hand reaching between his thighs and stroking softly. “Is it so terrible to admit to yourself,” Elias asks, “that it feels good? Nothing wrong with a little bit of pleasure from time to time.” He smiles differently this time, though no less indulgently—past Jon, not at him— _smiling for the cameras_ flashes through Jon’s head and it takes all his effort not to be sick. He takes more shuddering, gasping breaths and tries not to think about anything else. In, out. In, out. “You can’t lie to me, Jon. You can lie to anyone else, but not to me. Not that you’ve ever been _good_ at lying, anyway. No. Only to yourself.” Elias’s voice is so fond it hurts, and Jon gasps and shifts beneath his hands, hips thrusting up. “Still pretending to breathe, I see. You really don’t have to. Are you so attached to this delusion of being human you would let yourself starve?” Elias twists his wrist as he makes a disapproving noise low in his throat and Jon’s eyelids flutter closed of their own volition. He has to bite his lip to choke back a moan. Not that it _helps_ , with Elias _inside his head_. “You shouldn’t, you know. I can help you with that.” Elias is moving, somehow, somewhere, and probably it’s important but Jon can’t keep track of it past the rush of sensation that is Elias’s hands on him. 

“Isn’t that—“ Jon’s voice stutters, small noises escaping his lips. “—I thought you _were_. Helping me with that.”

Elias chuckles. “Approximately.” And then suddenly his left hand is slipping out of its handcuff, over Jon’s mouth, pinching his nose shut. “There you are. Some practice with not breathing will do you good.”

Jon makes a muffled cry into Elias’s hand, adrenaline suddenly spiking. It is dark and he can’t breathe and there is someone holding him, blocking his mouth, and his heartbeat can’t tell if he’s in a wax museum or six feet underground except for how he knows _perfectly well_ that he’s in a prison cell with Elias of his own free will and he probably doesn’t even need a heartbeat. 

He realizes a moment later that he’s somehow _harder, closer_ , that fear apparently isn’t a turn-off for him anymore. He... probably should have expected that. It doesn’t matter. He didn’t. He can’t _breathe_ and Elias’s fingers haven’t _stopped_ , and they don’t feel like Daisy’s or Nikola’s and he doesn’t even know how he got out of the stupid _handcuffs_ —

“They were never locked, Jon,” Elias offers, voice matter-of-fact, and Jon wants to scream. He can feel the scream locked away in his chest, a pressure against his ribcage, but he can’t let it out with Elias still blocking his airflow. “No need to work yourself too hard trying to Know how I did it. I got the key from the guard by asking politely. I could have taken them off before if I had reason to. You should be more careful.”

Jon isn’t sure what there would be to say to that even if he could have talked. It’s true, and obviously so. He shouldn’t have come here in the first place. His lungs start to burn. It feels—distant, at least. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. He doesn’t _think_ Elias would kill him like this. At least, he _hopes_ —

“I’m not going to kill you,” Elias says gently, kissing one of the marks on Jon’s neck. “You won’t even pass out. Our master won’t let you, you should know that. It wants you to see.”

Of course. He is of the Eye now, and the Eye does not want him to escape.

Instead, he watches, his vision expanding past the edges of his periphery into a kaleidoscopic splitscreen. Through his eyes and through Elias’s eyes and through the camera in the corner and through the eyes of the guard watching its feed, he sees himself, small and weak and bare in Elias’s arms. He hadn’t noticed when he had started to lean back, but he must have at some point, because there he is, leaning back against Elias’s chest, his head held up only by the hand that still won’t let him _breathe._

It hurts. It hurts and his body jerks, sweaty and trembling, beneath Elias’s hands, and Elias kisses his neck and presses arousal into his mind until he can no longer tell himself that it hurts. It feels like spinning too much, too fast, an odd combination of euphoria and nausea that goes to his head and leaves him weak.

He comes with a low sound deep in his throat, head pounding from want of air. He can’t tell if he’s too hot or too cold. He’s too—something. He looks a wreck, hair messed up, dotted with hickeys and splattered with cum, and he hates it. 

Elias’s hand stops blocking his airway in order to catch him before he slides dizzily to the floor. “You did well, Jon,” he says, and the only reason Jon doesn’t laugh is because he doesn’t have the breath left for it. Instead he closes his eyes. It doesn’t make much of a difference. He can still feel it, like he’s caked in mud. Like it’s beneath his nails and in his pores and down his throat. He started taking scalding showers after Jane Prentiss attacked, scratching at scabs until they stung under the water. He doubled down on the habit after the circus, started rubbing at his skin until it was red, trying to get the nonexistent lotion off of him. It never made a difference, not that it stopped him from trying. He can already tell that this is the same thing, that he’ll be feeling Elias’s hands on his skin for as long as he _has_ skin.

He’s not, he realizes with a start, hungry anymore. He feels… good. Not weak, not achy, and when he does try breathing again it feels deeper, somehow. Even trembling he feels stronger than he has in weeks.

When his eyes flutter open, Elias is smiling down at him. “Bring a knife next time, will you? I do think we can have some _lovely_ experiences together, even if you _are_ insisting on this… hunger strike of yours.”

**

“You look better,” Basira comments when he comes into work the next day. He’s wearing a soft turtleneck, but it still chafes his stomach where he scrubbed the skin raw. “Think the worst of it is over?”

He forces the corners of his lips up. “I don’t know. I hope so. I certainly _feel_ better.”

Basira watches him for another moment, expression unreadable. “Good,” she says at last, before turning back to her papers. 


End file.
